Boats.com opens online gear and parts store

Boats.com, in association with MarineMax, launched a gear and parts store that stocks everything from clothing and accessories to anchors, engine parts and water skis.

“Boats.com is evolving,” Sonya Schweitzer, director of business development at the division of Dominion Marine Media, said in a statement. “We are building on our unique knowledge of boats and boaters to provide boating enthusiasts with everything they need to ensure great experiences. We want our visitors to rely on Boats.com for all of their boating-related needs.”

I quit Iboats.com for that reason and I am ready to do the same at boats.com. Takes a lot of nerve to ask me to pay $300 a month to promote my dealership on their site and then try to steal my parts, accessories, and financing business away from me. I say a revolt is definately in order.

It looks like MarineMax and http://www.Boats.com are living the Democratic Party dream… “You didn’t build that. Someone else built it.” I guess that my small business isn’t really important to Boats.com. It is hard enough competing against the online “no actual store” suppliers that are supported by the big resellers and shippers of product, (ie. Amazon) but what will happen to the customer when all the bricks and mortar stores are consumed by the mega stores with no or limited customer services provided to answer questions or show and explain the products.

So now we as dealers are going to be competing with the same people who we pay to to help promote our businesses through their marketing products. Sounds like a conflict of interest to me. I guess I won’t be advertising with my competition going forward.

Propman, you sound bitter and I can understand why you feel your business is threatened. But, when you mislead with your post by blaming the president and Democrats by taking Obama’s words out of context, you undermine yourself. It limits your credibility because one has to wonder if you believed Fox News’ dishonest reporting in the matter, or if you didn’t bother to watch the entire clip which made abundantly clear what he was and was not saying. You may be of one party or another, but at least you could be honest as well. Perhaps when Americans can be truthful and thoughtful in political discussions the polar divide designed by Carl Rove can begin to heal.

Now onto the subject at hand, your business. You complained that online retailers put you at a disadvantage. You can’t blame them for that or you are not a capitalist. You need to pull yourself up by the bootstraps and do it better. Find a way to distinguish yourself. I wouldn’t rely only on “customer services provided to answer questions.” I rarely find anyone competent in stores to answer my questions, that’s why I shop online. I find it irritating that I usually have more product knowledge than the salesman for most anything I buy. Why is that? Most salesmen, from cars, to yachts, to microwave ovens are incompetent and lazy at their jobs. So, if you’re going to try an hang on to your bricks and mortar business, you’d better be able to deliver some damn good customer service.

If I were your dealers I would be ticked off too but I would not worry to much about it as the great management at Dominion that decided this was a great thing will be sure to make it fail as well. They know very well how to bite the hand that feeds them, it is SOP for them. They tried to do the exact same thing in their powersports division and it failed, just like they tried to sell web sites through Cycle Web Services and Marine Web Services, both failed as well due to upper management at the Dominion head office.

If Dominion managed a country, the people would rise against them and top management, from all the subsidiaries, would be thrown to the sea via trebuchet. If you don’t know what a trebuchet is, watch a movie or look it up.